CHINA
Cargo ships collide
Two cargo ships collided on Friday off the eastern city of Qingdao, state media reported, with one of the freighters later sinking. Nine of the crew of the Oriental Sunrise were rescued, three of whom were injured, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday, while 10 were missing. All 19 were believed to be North Korean. Their ship had earlier collided with the Hamburg Bridge, Xinhua said, citing Qingdao municipal authorities, adding that both vessels were Panama-flagged. It did not state their ownership.
JAPAN
Fishermen net US$145,000
A fishing boat has netted a bag packed with ￥11 million (US$145,000). The cash-laden catch was found off the country’s northeastern coast that was devastated by an earthquake-triggered tsunami seven months ago. Ofunato city official Kou Ueno said yesterday that a trawling fishing boat pulled the bag with more than a thousand ￥10,000 bills from the bottom of the sea on Oct. 8 off the coast of the city in Iwate Prefecture. Ueno said the money was likely swept away from its still-unknown owner by the March 11 tsunami.
THAILAND
Soldiers held over deaths
Police have detained nine soldiers suspected of killing 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River early last month, authorities said yesterday. The Thai troops are thought to have links to a Myanmar drug kingpin. The soldiers surrendered on Friday in northern Chiang Rai Province, Lieutenant General Wut Liptapanlop said. National police chief General Priewpan Damapong promised a full investigation into the deadly raid on two Chinese vessels on Oct. 5, saying the military was fully cooperating. “Police will prosecute all nine soldiers,” he said. “Their actions have nothing to do with the Thai army.”
INDIA
No Metallica, so fans riot
Thousands of disappointed fans have broken chairs and torn posters after organizers canceled a Metallica concert on the outskirts of the capital. The Press Trust of India news agency said police arrested four people from the company that had organized the concert on charges of cheating people who had waited for hours for the scheduled Friday performance by the US heavy metal band. Organizers said the concert was called off because of technical difficulties. Metallica promised full refunds to those who had bought tickets.
INDIA
Office worker wins US$1m
An office worker too poor to own a TV set has won an unprecedented US$1 million in the Indian version of the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Sushil Kumar’s win this week drew comparisons with the plot of 2008 Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire and, like its fictional protagonist Jamal, the 27-year-old also watched the TV show as an escape from penury. This is the first time a contestant has won US$1 million on the popular TV show hosted by Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan. The episode will be broadcast next week and Kumar takes home 3.5 crore rupees (about US$720,000) after tax. Kumar, who watched the show at a neighbor’s house because his family was too poor to afford a TV, said he had not made any grand plans for the money. “I’m going to repair my house, fulfil a few basic needs and then move to Delhi to study for the civil service exams,” he said in a telephone interview.
RUSSIA
Ex-Moscow mayor pressured
The Interior Ministry on Friday threatened former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov with reprisals if he fails to show up for questioning as part of a probe into an alleged US$430 million bank fraud. The warning to Luzhkov, who lost his job a year ago after 18 years in office, follows his stinging attacks on the Kremlin. Luzhkov described the probe as a political punishment for his criticism of President Dmitry Medvedev, and said he would return from abroad to prove his innocence. The ministry made a similar warning to Luzhkov’s billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina, saying she has ignored previous summons. Baturina insisted that she had received no summons, Interfax reported.
FRANCE
‘Jackal’ ends hunger strike
Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal has ended an 11-day hunger strike at a Parisian jail where he is serving a life sentence for murder, his lawyer said on Friday. The Marxist-Leninist radical, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, began the protest on Oct. 18, a week after being placed in an isolation cell. His attorney Francis Vuillemin said prison authorities had removed Carlos from solitary confinement on Thursday and allowed him to return to quarters reserved for public figures at La Sante prison. Carlos, 62, is awaiting a new trial due to begin on Nov. 7 for attacks that left 11 people dead in France in 1982 and 1983. In 1997, Carlos was sentenced to life behind bars for the 1975 shooting deaths of two French policemen and a police informer.
RUSSIA
Bolshoi Theater reopens
The Bolshoi Theater reopened on Friday after a massive reconstruction effort that restored it to its original imperial splendor. The US$700 million, six-year effort meticulously recreated the opulent 19th-century decor, many elements of which had been simplified or removed during communist rule. The renovation also added state-of-the art stage gear and created an additional underground hall. Local and international celebrities, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, opera diva Galina Vishnevskaya, ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and Italian actress Monica Bellucci, filled the grand gold-and-red, 1,743-seat hall in Moscow for Friday’s gala opening led by President Dmitry Medvedev.
IRAN
Film actress spared lashes
An actress sentenced to be whipped for her role in an Australian-produced film has been spared the lashes and been freed after having her term reduced on appeal, a source close to her family confirmed yesterday. Marzieh Vafamehr had her original punishment of a year in prison and 90 lashes cut to the three months detention already served and a US$1,000 fine instead of the whipping, the source said on condition of anonymity. News of Vafamehr’s initial sentence sparked alarm and outrage in Australia, where the makers of the film, My Tehran for Sale, stressed that it had obtained the necessary Iranian permission to be made in Tehran. Iran’s Fars news agency said the film — which contains a scene showing Vafamehr with a shaved head and not wearing the headscarf obligatory under Iran’s Islamic laws — had not been approved for distribution in the country and was being distributed there illegally. Shot entirely in Tehran and directed by Iranian-Australian Granaz Moussavi, the 2008 film tells the story of a young actress in Iran’s capital whose work is banned by the authorities.
CANADA
Plane crashes in road
A small plane crash-landed on a busy road, hit a car and burst into flames after take-off in Vancouver, killing the pilot and injuring 10 others, authorities said on Friday. Several of the victims, who included all eight people on board the plane and two in the car, had critical injuries. Vancouver Coastal Health authority later updated the condition of the injured, saying two were released from hospital overnight, two remained in critical condition and four were in stable but serious condition.
UNITED STATES
Students stay on cruise ship
Students at a liberal arts college in Maryland packed their bags on Friday to spend the rest of the semester on a cruise ship that’s going nowhere. St Mary’s College, in St Mary’s City off the Chesapeake Bay, is relocating about 240 students to the Sea Voyager while it cleans up an outbreak of health-threatening mold in its dormitories. It chartered the 87m, 110 cabin vessel — scheduled to arrive yesterday or today near its waterside campus — as a cost-effective alternative to local hotels where the displaced undergraduates have been temporarily staying.
MEXICO
Twenty-one die in shootouts
Authorities said at least 21 people were killed on Friday in three shootouts between soldiers and gunmen and a fight between rival drug gangs. At least 15 deaths occurred in three gun-battles in Michoacan State, state prosecutor spokesman Jonathan Arredondo said. Michoacan State is where President Felipe Calderon launched his armed offensive against organized crime in 2006. The state holds gubernatorial elections on Nov. 13. In the northern state of Sinaloa, six people were killed on Friday during a shootout between two groups of armed men on a highway in the town of Guamuchil, assistant state prosecutor Martin Robles said.
CHILE
Obama receives high marks
Latin Americans give US President Barack Obama the highest approval rating of any leader in the region. Obama was rated 6.3 on a scale of one to 10 in the survey conducted by the Chile-based Latinobarometro polling organization. He was closely followed by Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff at 6. Latinobarometro polled 20,000 people in 18 Latin American countries. The leader with the worst mark was former Cuban president Fidel Castro at 4.1. Next-lowest were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who tied at 4.4. Bolivian President Evo Morales had 4.9 and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera 5.1.
BRAZIL
Dam occupation ends
Hundreds of protesters ended their occupation of the construction site of one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams, Indian rights activists said on Friday. Renato Santana of the Indian Missionary Council said more than 600 Indians, fishermen and river dwellers peacefully left the construction site of the Belo Monte dam on Thursday night after a judge ordered their eviction. They had taken over the work site on Thursday morning to demand that work on the dam be stopped. A spokeswoman for the Norte Energia consortium that is building the dam confirmed the end of the occupation. Andressa Lanzellotti said the protesters caused no damage and that work on the dam had resumed. The US$11 billion, 11,000 megawatt dam will be the world’s third largest when completed on the Xingu River that feeds the Amazon.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
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